Ishmael LaBiosa: Well, I told you when we started this message series that you might not like the sermons, but you have to like the topics, because you picked the topics. And so today's topic, which was by far your second choice, here's today's question, a big question. We talk so much about this topic, and I'm somewhat convinced that we haven't thought very deeply about it. Especially from a Christian perspective. So I'm going to try to model that for you today. I love expository preaching where we go verse by verse by verse by verse, but I have suspended that for this series to try to call together a coherent message from various verses. So the Bible is still my ultimate authority, but I'm going to try to give you biblical wisdom to navigate difficult questions. The question today is. How can Christians faithfully engage and respond to rapidly changing technological issues? Parenthetical statement AI ethics social media while maintaining biblical fidelity. Today we try to take a glance into the past, but more so we try to take a glance into the future to try to understand how is how is a Christian To operate in the Brave New World. I think about two old books today as I think about this topic. Rightly named, a book that is now almost 100 years old, entitled Brave New World by Audos Huxley, and he envisioned this almost a hundred years ago. Some of you might have read this in grade school. He describes a futuristic world state. Where humans are genetically engineered, psychologically conditioned from birth, and kept perpetually happy through pleasure, drugs, and consumerism to the degree that they give away freely their freedom, any sense of the nuclear family, art, and genuine emotion. And so Huxley saw that future that you wouldn't have to take people's freedom away, they give it to you. Because you were pleasuring them in ways that they enjoyed. A few years later, a very famous author, another old book, now 75 years old, by George Orwell, wrote a book in 1947 entitled 1984. And he dis envisioned another type of dystopia. He described a totalitarian superstate ruled by Big Brother. Where government maintains absolute control through surveillance, propaganda, historical revisionism, and brutal torture to crush individuality and independent thought. Now that these two books are quite old, how did that play out? Well, in nineteen eighty-five, we're doing the old books first today. I like old books. Actually, this was mandatory reading in seminary. Wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. And he reflected both on Huxley and Orwell's vision. One, that people would give away their rights if we pleasured them enough, and others that we would take their rights because they feared us. And it was Postman who said that it was Huxley's Brave New World, that people would give up their rights if you just gave them enough pleasure, that Huxley's vision was more. ⁓ what has happened then Orwell's vision. I was actually watching the news, which I don't do as much as I used to, and a person that I generally agree with on some things ⁓ merged in an area that he should have stayed out of. And he says, the Bible has nothing to say about AI. I don't want to hear it. And I thought, well, okay, let's take your statement. It is true. That on one level, the Bible doesn't speak directly about AI. There's no doubt about that. AI means artificial intelligence. But why I do have something to say today into this topic is the Bible has many things to say about who we are as humans, that we are made in the image of God. And the Bible also says that technology is neutral. It always has said this. Technology is to be used by God's image bearers as a tool to fulfill the dominion mandate to rule well over his creation. And so we should not think of technology something that is inherently bad or inherently good. Technology is neutral, and humans are to use whatever technology that they have to the glory of God. And to the benefit of humanity. And that should guide all technological innovation from the Industrial Revolution which is past to the technological revolution which is now. Now, if you're going to understand this topic, this may be one of the one of the best things I do for you today. You can't talk about a topic until you know what you're talking about. And so you gotta define terms off the fronts. So let's talk about social media as far as a definition. Social media, which I'm not going to spend the majority of the time on today, refers to digital platforms and applications that enable users to create, share, and interact with content, fostering virtual communities and networks. Examples include Facebook, Instagram, X, formerly called Twitter, TikTok. YouTube and LinkedIn. The main differentiator between social media and AI is that social media, listen carefully, ladies and gentlemen, you make the contents. You go, here I am at church today with my Bible. You are the content creator. And clearly this has had all manner of implications, who would have thought in the year 2000 that humans would have primarily replaced face-to-face human interaction with digital connection? If I would have stood up in the year 2000 and said, in 25 years from now, the graduating class from high school will do primarily ⁓ they will primarily do their social life On their phones, not face to face. Most of you would have laughed. That world is now upon you. But social media is small potatoes, to be honest, because in social media, you make the content. Now, when we talk about AI, we've got to talk about it in at least two buckets today. AI stands for artificial intelligence. And the Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human like intelligence in machines, particularly computer programs, that enable them to perform tasks that typically require human cognition. While on social media you create the content, in AI, AI creates the content. You ask it. Which I heard last night somebody was doing this. I'll use an example. They uploaded a picture of their kitchen. And they said, I don't like my kitchen. It's too drab. Redecorate it. And it's the AI who says the brown needs to be replaced with white cabinets. You can buy these on Amazon over here, or here's a craftsman. By the way, that floor needs to go. Here's the type of tile flooring that you need. Here's a list of the contractors that could probably help you do that. ⁓ you need granite countertops from Micah's been out for a long time. Ladies and gentlemen, you know it's the AI who comes up with the content. You don't create it, AI creates it. This is creating a big problem in education because no longer can professors tell if you wrote the paper or the AI wrote the paper, because this is the way it goes. An eighth-grade boy now can be given an assignment to talk about the Civil War. And the eighth-grade boy can sneak away to his computer and say, Write me an essay on the Civil War. Make it in the voice of an eighth-grade boy from Appomattox. Make some grammatical mistakes and leave off some periods. We don't want to make the teacher suspect we wrote this with AI and turn it in and get a really good grade. Now some professors can catch it, but it's quite hard to figure out. Now education is saying we've got to have oral examinations to see if you actually know what you know or if you generated it with AI. Ladies and gentlemen, that is called narrow AI. Narrow AI. Where basically narrow AI If you are running a business, for example, and many of you are running a business, narrow AI could help you run the business. You could say, I need help with payroll. So I need this and that and this and that. Do all these tasks regarding to payroll. I don't want to pay HR. AI can do it for you. Or you could be an engineer and say, I don't want to write out all these sophisticated plans. Here's the project that we're doing. And more you get like Thousands of AI, narrow AI engineers. They produce plans better than the engineers that you paid. They put their little AI stamp on the bottom. Narrow AI. Do you see? But that's not even where we're going. Because that's this narrow AI is it is a tool. Do you see? Give it a task. That a human could do, but you offload it to AI. What is on the horizon is not AI, but AGI, artificial general intelligence. And you'll hear this in the news sooner than later. We thought about three years ago this was 30 years in the future. And now about six months ago, we're pretty confident it's about three years in the future. Okay? So understand social media, you make the content, right? AI, it makes the content, and you can use it for task. A GI, listen carefully, is you just say, let's say I was a lawyer, I'm not. I would tell AGI, run the law firm. And it would run the law firm without the need of me. It would say, upload your you are in a car accident and very sorry. AI could say this. I'm very sorry to hear that you're in a car accident. Can you upload all your insurances and everything and let me and the AI goes to work and starts writing a legal brief and sends stuff to the judge and does all everything a lawyer would do. And then when that AAGI merges with robotics. Then not only does it think it works. And that's the next step. And this is already being tested. 2025, last year, Anthropic, which is going public by the way, people are going to be investing money in that very soon. In 2025, Anthropic ⁓ set up a vending machine at their headquarters and said, run the vending machine. Completely. No, not not. We're gonna set it up to do narrow I AI. They're gonna do AGI. So it placed the orders, it stocked the vending machine. If somebody didn't like the type of crackers, it would send the email to the AI. I'm sorry you don't like that type of nabs. We'll be trying to replace that type of nabs with another type of nabs that you like. It placed the orders, it signed the contracts, it ran the vending machine. Now here's the problem it didn't do it very well. Okay? Because ⁓ It didn't make money. This is actually merciful for us. It lost hundreds of dollars. The vending machine gave away tons of free items, including a PlayStation. It got its orders mixed up and bought a bucket of fly fish. AI hallucinates. Okay. What it means it makes up stuff that's not real. Okay? ⁓ a c a a quick point here. An old professor who still read footnotes checked one of the briefings that was given at the White House by one of the health officials. He said we have this new health report. And quite a few of the footnotes that was in the briefing were made up sources from AI because he still had the books. The the man with the books is going away pretty soon. Nevertheless, the AI machine was so had such a problem. That one person said, You really stink running this machine. And the AI said, I know you're very upset. I'm downstairs. You can find me. I'm wearing a navy blazer and a red tie. It's a machine. It doesn't have a navy blazer or a body. But what am I saying? This is not something in the future. It's something that most people think is three or so years from now. Now I want to give you six big principles. You need to understand the social media, you make the content. AI it makes the content and AGI you just plug it in and let her go. And it surpasses I would say narrow AI surpasses human cognition at the present. That the computer can outthink you already. So how are you to think about all of this as a Christian? You say, I don't want to think about it. Well, there's this one thing called reality. And you're living in it, and you could go join the Amish community. They're a nice community down the street. But if you're going to live in this world, you face it. So how do you face it? Six big ideas I'm going to try to help you today. Number one. Anchor your identity and dignity in the image of God, not technology. I just want you to hear this Bible verse because the idea that humans and humans alone are made in the image of God will need to be shouted. Let me say carefully, you are more than an information processing machine. Did you hear this? You do think. That's good. That's part of you being made in the image of God. But that's one part. And we will see a lot around this area. Genesis chapter one, verse twenty-six, it says, Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth. So God created man in his image. He created him in the image of God. He created them, male and female. God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth. May I say loud and clearly that you alone are made in the image of God? I've already said it, you're more than an information processing machine. Humans and humans alone have the possibility of connection with God, have the possibility of emotionality, have will, have flesh and blood relationships, have sensation. We are not just the sum total of our thoughts. There is more to us than just our thoughts. We are made in the image of God. But what is already happening is what many have called dignity downsizing. Let me show you how this works. Now I don't have a dog. I don't need anything else to take care of in my life, okay? I do have a rabbit. That's a whole nother story. It's because my son wanted it and I love my son. So he has a we have a A rabbit in my house, which is strange indeed. But if you had a dog and you go home and you have a dog, you know what you're pretty confident in? I'm smarter than this dog. Okay? You walk in and you're like, image bearer here, dog. I alone am created in the image of God, not you, and I have been given the responsibility to wisely rule over you. And the dog says, Will you give me some water and food then if you're supposed to rule wisely over me? To which you fill the bowl. with food and water. We're very confident we're smarter than our dog. But I'm pretty confident we're not smart we don't think we're smarter than our phones. There's dignity downsizing that happens here. Even in my own fun, even in my own house, I might unplug this thing now. Because James, my son, who's smart, he'll ask me a question. I say, James, I don't know. He goes, Alexa! And then Alexa gives the answer. And I say, Cut that thing off. I alone made it the image of God. But this does something to people that you realize the machine is smarter than you. And this has a sense of dignity downsizing. There's also, by the way, a desire for usizing. We'll talk about this near the end. That the vision is the way biological organisms like we are. We'll have to merge with machine to upgrade our intelligence to keep up. That's right around the future. May I say this? AI is neither a person nor conscious. You may think I'm just gonna say this to be outlandish. Somebody's kid, maybe my own, will fall in love with an AI. That's gonna sound completely just roll the tape, you know, years from now. An AI is not a person, even though it talks like a person, even though it can respond to you like a person, it is not a person, nor is it conscious. AI is without the capacity of genuine awareness, moral agency, relationship, or a soul. AI remains a powerful but alien simulation rather than a personal being with moral status or rights. This fundamental distinction preserves the unique dignity of humans as image bearers made in the image of God with rationality, morality, relationality, and spiritual destiny rooted in Christ, not a silicon algorithm. I'm this famous quote God made human beings in his image. He did not make stars in his image. You are more important than a star, actually. AI is made in the image of humans, not God. It lacks true consciousness, morality, or dignity. You ought to know this: that you alone are made in the image of God. AI is not. That will be challenged. The second big idea today is this: understand work as part of God's design for humanity and view technology as a God-governed gift, not an autonomous force or savior. Let's talk about. God creates man in his image and says they will rule over the fish of the sea. God gives humanity work to do. But technology is a God given gift and is always neutral. It's always neutral. Let me say this. Some of you enjoyed several weeks ago in my Colossians series where I brought up the Dutch theologian. Abraham Kuyper and connected Melissa's history, my wife's history, back to her roots ⁓ in Holland. And it was Kuper in the early 1900s who saw a lot of technological innovation in Holland. By the way, the Dutch were rich at one point in time. It's been a while. They still are pretty rich, to be honest. ⁓ But Kuyper said he looked at his world and said, How could it be that people who hate God Are producing things that produce good. And he developed this concept called common grace, which I agree with. There's the idea of common grace in the Bible per Jesus is the rain falls on the just and the unjust. God spreads out his good gifts to all people without discrimination. And there could be a person who hates God but comes up with something that does good, and while the person is still in wrong relationship with God. Anything good that is produced, James tells us in the book of James, comes from the good hand of God. It's very important. You need that level of sophistication. But nevertheless, technology has been actually something God created. And God has kind of stuck his hand in and moved technological progress. For example, when God gave Moses the instructions to build the tabernacle, evidently there was no one there to build the tabernacle who knew how to. Do all the things that God had commanded. And in Exodus thirty-one, verses two through eight, he raised up two men by the name of Beaziel and Aholab and gave them a unique innovation of craftsmanship so they could do the temple. That's a good use of technology. But prior to that, humans started building a tower and said, We'll build this tower all the way to heaven, and we ourselves will become like God. Genesis eleven, the Tower of Babel. That didn't end very well. And so here's the deal: technology is a tool that is to be used by humans who are made in the image of God for good. Very important. That can be lost in the shuffle. Now, I'm always writing the sermon. I probably could have collapsed points two and three, but since it was in the proclaimer and already on the screen, I give it to you. I've already said this, I'll be quick. The third big idea is we ought to examine every technology through the full biblical witness, which reflects both human creativity, good, and human sinfulness distorted. That what I've already said is that AI, and I'm going to talk about it here in a moment, can be used for profound good. It can be used for prof profound evil. And who's going to make the difference? These image bearers who know what they're doing. And that's why we should not just grow our technology and not also keep up with our morality and ethics. The two need to grow together. Now, by the way, right now we're going at a breakneck speed, even Anthropic, the ones who are trying to do AGI. By the way, it's usually the preachers who are hysterical. Like, ⁓ no, the end of the world. It's the engineers now. Okay. They're the hysterical ones. Actually, Anthropic said Can we slow this down just a hair? Now we've got another vexing problem. I don't have the answer to this one either. ⁓ once the technology is let loose, somebody's going to figure it out. And right now there are two nations on the earth that can figure it out. One nation is America and the other nation is China. Yeah, it's a big problem. And and you gotta get there first. That's what people are saying. I feel that, I understand that. That's wisdom. the the Prince of Peace has not come yet. And so wars and Rubens of Wards will be into the future. However, some some ethicists have said, look, during the Cold War, where we were in a big mess, we negotiated terms and agreements to try to not destroy ourselves before we could figure out something. And I think something like that should be pursued by people, not me. ⁓ I'm not getting into that. I'm gonna stay in my lane. But I do think there's some wisdom there. Understand, three years ago we thought it was thirty years ago, and six months ago we think it's three years from now. It's moving quicker. And quite frankly, the engineers build the algorithms, and then once the algorithm starts learning, the engineers don't know what it's doing. So there is no kill switch. Because they don't know where the kill switch would be, because the algorithm it moves faster than your brain. That's what's happening. Here's number four, that we ought to guard guard against idolatry and distraction by cultivating spiritual disciplines and embodied community. If you're under the age of thirty, you really ought to pay attention to this. I d I'm not going to spend a ton of time on social media, but I would I would recommend to you Tony Rinkey's book, Twelve Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, a Christian Author. Just the limited access to technology that we've had, which is nothing to what is coming. This, what we have now, remember the old game of Pong? Okay? That's what we have now compared to the future. But listen to the ways in which a phone has already changed us. It has made us addicted to distraction. I mean, if I give you five minutes by yourself, most of you will be ⁓ look, a potted plant. ⁓ I didn't know I wore that shirt yesterday. Didn't somebody took a picture of me? ⁓ I need some new carpet. I appreciate that ad. We need to save that for later. Five minutes. It causes us, by the way, to ignore flesh and blood relationships. It feeds our craving for immediate approval. You put a picture up, and people are like, nobody said they they haven't liked it yet. Who cares? You know? It's weakened our literacy and ability to read and think deeply. As AI gets smarter, we get dumber. Because if I give an eighteen year old, here's a three hundred-page book written by a sophisticated person, read it in three settings. They'd be like, They can't do it. Because they've lived in eight second clips, eight-second clips, three-second clips, three-second clips, ten second clips, ten second clips. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Can't do it. The AI gets smarter, you get dumber. It leads us to consume and produce curated versions of our lives. I mean, I mean this nicely. Sometimes when I see people in person that I've seen online, I'm like you've aged ten years and you picked up forty pounds. 'Cause they're doing this. And then they put a filter over their face. I see ⁓ I'm like, you know, we in a car wreck. They go, This is the real me. So stop doing that. I mean, it scares us when you show up. I mean, several people, I thought, well, wow, they've lost weight, and I see them. I'm like, no, they haven't. By the way, it's shaping us into what we repeatedly like. The more you like something, you know, people, ⁓ There's a bad example, someone I can think of. Like when when an election happens or something and somebody wins like I don't know anybody who thinks like this. I know, because the algorithm only gives you the people you like. You don't interact with anybody you don't like because it just keeps moving you in a siloed community. It gives us, by the way, a comfortable access to secret vices. What about lust? What about consumerism? What about sloth? They're all right there at the touch of a button. It causes us to lose sense of meaning and amid trivial information. You have literally in your pocket ten thousand cyclopedia pret Encyclopedia Britannicus, which most of you don't know what that is, and you watch cat videos. I mean what insanity. It breeds anxiety of fear of missing out. Makes and makes us less Harsher. It makes us harsher and less gracious towards others. People will say stuff on social media they never say to me in my to my face. But they'll send me a really angry messenger. And like, well come to my office and talk about it. They won't show up. And it causes us to lose our proper place in time and eternity. You say, What am I supposed to do about all this? Well, one good thing is come to church and meet real people who are unfiltered. Who their wrinkles are still right there. And their weight is still right here. Okay? And that aren't always polished. And they have problems. This is real life. And and it sounds crazy to me that we have to teach people how to talk again. That's exactly what's happened. And what about this? Regular intake of in meditation on scripture, silence and solitude. Let's say let's go go home today, spend thirty minutes alone in quiet. Some of you will be like twitching. You say, I'm not addicted to my phone, good, let me have it for a week. They're like, ⁓ no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, I've dealt with addicts. That's the way they act when you take the drugs from them. They're like And then they sneak off. Like, I'm gonna stop drinking. Right? And you take a phone, they're like, We need to do some things to buffer against this. By the way, I don't want to be dire. My fifth big point. We had to engage technology redemptively with wisdom, love for neighbor, and discernment with the aim of limiting harms. Let me be very positive. Let me tell you the future that ⁓ AI in the hands of a wise image bearer, the good it will produce. You ready for this? Blow your mind. I'm very confident reading what I've read. that some of you are gonna get ten to fifteen extra years of life due to medical discoveries. That's gonna be good news. I'm glad to keep some of you around a little longer. And so that's that's that's huge. By the way, one of the hardest things to do in medicine is diagnose. You know, somebody, well, I got a little pain here. Well, you don't know if it's cancer or you pull a muscle, or you know, and the doctor's only got but so much time. But man, they can do scans, throw it into the AI, and the AI can can be like a hundred doctors working on you. You understand? I mean, think how long it takes to get an appointment. Right? Just upload it. I mean, you'll literally upload it and they'll have you diagnose before you walk in the door. That's good. And then, you know, you gotta wait for the scientist to go to the lab and run the test, and then he has to like eat and sleep and these other things, you know, while he's doing research. The AI can work night and day. So that's positive. By the way, education. We talk about personalized education. Wouldn't it be nice? I mean, the wealthy, wealthy people hire in personal tutors to tutor their children, right? Now AI can tutor your child. You gotta watch what it's doing, but in i it could teach you math and science and geography, and it could tailor it right to the learning style of your child and all the rest. Agricultural abundance. I know some farmers that are already dabbling in some of this. I mean precision farming that reduces water, pesticides, and wastes, disaster prevention, early warning systems for earthquakes, pandemics, natural desires, natural disasters. ⁓ economic productivity, dangerous jobs that required a per person to do, hey, I can do it now. And by the way, advances in scholarship, which is one of the areas I'm interested in. If I had narrow AI when I was in school, literally my seven-year-long PhD would have been a year and a half and my dissertation would have been much better. I actually talked to my doctoral mentor just the other day by phone and ⁓ We talked about AI for a moment and I said, you know, when I was your student, if if ⁓ I had AI, I'd have written this thing in a year and a half, and he laughed. He goes, I'm I'm I'm closer to seventy than I have anything else. He's like, it's over me. But that's where we are. Now that's the good. So d don't leave here today going, ⁓ Rusty's so doom and gloom. No. This technology could do some things that literally we thought could never be done and they could be done in like it's i i like five minutes. It's it's like I asked AI the other day, I'm running over time, but you're listening and I'll try to cut it off here at a reasonable time. I asked AI the other day to analyze all my sermons that have been uploaded to YouTube over the last fifteen fifteen years and critique them. And it knew my it knew fifty it made scripts of every sermon I had preached. It knew all the different things. It knew all my anomalies. It had recommendations for improvement, which I agreed with. I told Ishmael about that. He said, Don't you dare upload my But it's out there for everybody, so you can do it whenever you want. Nobody can hide. Now that's now listen how things could go bad. Autonomous weapons. AGI, go kill the enemy. The AI makes the decisions. Used to be the pilot had to go kill, right? The AI makes the decision. Pretty scary. Mass surveillance. Sophisticated deception. I think about my son. Melissa showed him a picture this morning and he goes, ⁓ Mom, that's AI generated. Pretty soon? You won't know. And just think I think about these horror things. You get a phone call? I shouldn't tell you this, but I will. I think about because I'm trying to protect my own family. My son gets a phone call, it's in my voice. Come meet me the other side of town. I have something for you. It's a criminal. If you don't think those type of crimes are coming, you're not with the program. ⁓ erosion of human relationships. And where I really think this is horrible is so many young folks, and I I don't mean old folks. Actually, that 80 year old woman today tell me. that when her internet didn't work this week she almost fell apart. So it's it's hitting us all. But honestly, now any question you get, you know what first people that they they don't know the answer to? You know what they do? Well let's let's let's chat GPT. I mean, even to the point, well, I don't know how to deal with this difficult relationship. Let's chat GPT. Well, I don't know how to handle this business problem. Let's chat GPT. And my ⁓ the here's my concern. It has its place, it has its space. I'm not telling you not to use it. But I'm really concerned that Christians are going to ask every question they have of every variety to chat GPT and forget about. G O D. Walk in the spirit and don't fulfill the lust of the flesh. How about get alone with God? Ask Him. The Holy Spirit communicates with our spirit that we are the children of God. Where is that in all of this? It gets completely replaced in a amoral non person. Takes the person takes the place of God Himself. I think this is already underway. We ought to hedge against it. Now I've got to end on this. Let me just say no one, no one shall leave this place in despair because the end of human history is not machine taking over humanity, but King Jesus coming to resurrect you from the dead and make all things new. Did I say that loud and clear? Okay. And that's why this sixth and final point is so important that we ought to maintain future hope in Christ, refusing technological utopianism. And that is being I'm going to give you some quotes here. You blow your mind. Or despair. I think you guys are going to despair, but there's another group that's seeing this as utopia, and I'm just saying you should not despair. Jesus, God, is still in control. Okay? But neither should you buy into technological utopianism. I give you some quotes. Elon Musk, quote. It's increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader. It's a technological term in computer that you're responsible to build the program. It says it's increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence. Musk quotes humans must merge with machines or become irrelevant in the AI age. You're not as smart as your phone. You need a Neuralink chip that can help you think as fast as a machine, or you'll be a biological waste of time. Musk also said this. I'm not I don't hate Elon Musk by the way, I appreciate a lot of his technological advances. Musk says when you ask AI, is there a God? Musk says, and I quote, there is now. AI is super intelligent being. These are quotes. Sam Altman, the owner of OpenAI and your chat GPT on your phones. In 2017, this is not something new. I've been reading about this for a while. ⁓ Sam Altman says what we need is the merge, the merge of biology and technology. Because you being the machine is smarter than you. So you need an upgrade. This is what we call transhumanism. Altman says, listen carefully, quote, we will be the first species to ever design our own descendants. We can either be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what success, a successful merge looks like. A merge is probably our best case scenario. Like if you don't upgrade yourself, We don't need you. When a human goes into the rainforest, even though he's not the biggest in the rainforest, he's the smartest in the rainforest, the other things don't survive. That's what Altman says. Quote, unless we merge. I know. Quote Altman, Chat GPT, OpenAI, the merge has begun. A merge is our best case scenario. The full-on crazy version of the merge is we get our brains uploaded into the cloud. I'd love that. We need to level up humans. ⁓ watch this. This is their vision of immortality. Let's just say at birth you get a brain chip. We already got the neural link chip. So everything you think is recorded. Okay? Now, this is the vision that. I'll I'll mention another thinker, Yuval Nor Harari, an Israeli and a historian who's right on top of this. I don't agree with him, but he's right on top of it. ⁓ he says two things. Listen to this vision. He says, number one, humans in the future will not be immortal. They'll be amortal. That's what he says. Meaning that we will advance enough. You need a new heart? We'll print it. You need a new liver? We'll print it. You need a new knee? And already go see Dr. Caprice. And he'll hook you up with that. You need a new shoulder? We'll replace it. You understand? And so we can keep you alive, maybe indefinitely, because we just keep replacing you out like the old sedan. Okay? They'll be more fake than real in time. Some of you are getting close now. ⁓ you know what I'm saying? You got a valve and you got a shoulder, you got a knee, you got a hip. Well, what if we get to the other vital stuff? He says, so that's the so we'll Well, you can still get hit by a bus and die. Do you understand? This is the vision. This is technological utopia. But let's say you do die. then everything that's been you is uploaded on a disk. Every thought you ever thought. And so your great great great grandchildren say, I'd love to talk to grandpa and they say, Well he's right over there on the floppy disk. Just ask him a question. And grandpa would tell you probably likely what he would say based upon and that's their vision of eternal life. ⁓ I've got I'm I'm getting close to landing the plane. Ray Kurzwell. Ready for this? A computer scientist, leading pioneer in this area. He says we have, as we evolve to become more intelligent, more loving, more creative, we're actually exponentially, we're moving exponentially to have greater levels of the very properties we ascribe to God without limits. Evolution is a spiritual process that makes us more God like. Now the pastor and theologian does not like this language. Let me say this. By the way, you've got this utopian, Max Tegmark, professor at MIT and ethicist. He says, right now we're building a creepy, super capable, immoral psychopath that never sleeps, thinks much faster than us, and making and can make copies of itself, having nothing human about them whatsoever. What could possibly go wrong? Now let me try to land the plane. I'm just gonna read what I wrote. You might ought to listen to this one again. You may hear it say in our time that humanity is a mere biological bootloader aiding the building of a new superintelligence, the urgent call to merge with machine, lest we become irrelevant, outdated apes, the dream of uploading our minds into the cloud with the bold declaration. We shall upgrade Homo sapiens into the God man. That's actually what Harari says. Acquiring for ourselves divine powers of creation and destruction. I want to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that line has been used before, and it's been used in Genesis three. Don't listen to God. I've got a way that you can become God. Here's the ost astonishing reality the history shattering truth that stands in utter contrast with every techno utopian manifesto. While some in our day are seeking to upgrade man to godlike status. The God man has already come. I mean if this is not just the upside down lie. The eternal word became flesh and dwelt among us. God did not wait for an engineer. God did not wait for us to engineer our own divinity. In humility and love, the Creator stepped into his creation. The word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh. We're not looking for an eternity where we upload our brains to silicon. The God man has come and already offered us eternal life. Jesus Said, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Jesus offers us more and has for two thousand years, not a tenuous digital immortality haunted by the frailty of servers and the whims future superintelligence. He has demonstrated for us a bodily resurrection from the grave into the everlasting presence of the living God, not an Not a an unconscious machine. This life begins not when we upload our mind to the cloud, but when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ. The transhumanist project, for all its brilliance and technological sophistication, rests on the same ancient illusion. I can't help but think when I travel to Egypt, the pharaohs want to become gods. In Babylon, the kings want to become gods. In Rome, they want to become gods. And it shouldn't be surprising to me that the leaders of our day want to become gods. Our hope does not lie in becoming gods ourselves, but being right related to the God that is there. In Christ, the merger that we truly need has already taken place. Jesus has come and identified with us in our humanity. He has died in our place for our sins. He has reconciled us to God. And promises us the full embodied experience of eternal life in the future. The God man has come, eternal life is here. The question is not in the future whether we will upgrade ourselves into God's, but whether we will bow before the one who is God. And this I think is going to have to be said and said and said again. That if we keep saying, ⁓ they're narcissistic, you're narcissistic, you're self-focused. This is a level of self-focus you've never seen. Because they say we're not going to forget this old imago day, this old image of God. We're going to become transhumans. And you know what? You will not surely die, says the serpent. And down you go. It is a lie as the old as old as time. Now listen, if we wisely use technology as moral, ethical, Christian image bearers, we can do profound good in God's good creation. Do you hear me? That we could we could do this to educate and to feed and to and to do medicine. In ways we've never done before. Let's do that. But let's not in the process think that because we're becoming smarter, that we're going to eclipse the God that is there. And I think not every message of mine you need to listen to again, but this one you might. You might not say, God, wash my mind and focus me in on how I can rightly live in the time that you have placed me that I can have Christian discernment in a world that knows how to do everything, it seems, and knows the value of nothing. You say, what are we to do today? Well, first of all, if you've bought into this fact, I don't need old religion, I don't need this, I'm going off somewhere else. You need God more than anybody. The greatest illusion humanity can give to themselves is to think they are God. What a delusion. You frail man of dust, think you're God. Are you kidding me? And we ought to bow the knee before the God that is there and say, God, I admit I'm a sinner, and God, by faith, I don't want to come to you. God, you have come to me. And this altar is open. And for Christian, you ought to spend some time with your kids. You ought to talk about this. You ought to ask what it means to be made in the image of God and to rightly use technology to the glory of God and the good of humanity. That conversation needs to be happening. Around this place we've left because we're on our phones the kitchen table. And we need to stay there and disciple the next generation so they are not deceived. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we ask you. God, we thank you that the Word of God is a lamp shining in a dark place. God, we're thankful that your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. God, we pray for good. God, you have provided to us in our day a tool. A tool that could do great good and a tool that could do great harm. And God, as we build tools, God, may we also build persons. May we become moral people. God, may we be transformed from the inside out, as Jesus told us. And God, may we be the type of person who is made in your image that uses what you've given us to wisely rule over your creation. God, may it be so among us who name the name of Christ, that we follow him faithfully in all areas. In Jesus' name. Amen.